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Back in April my husband, Kim and I planned a trip to see family. It fell through when Kim got sick and couldn’t travel. Of course we didn’t buy refundable tickets, because who does that? Perhaps “we” should do that! Instead, we took a chance, rolled the dice, and lost. It wasn’t a total loss. We retained most of our money in the form of a credit. Now to look at the calendar and try again. Frontier was only giving me until mid-July to make up my mind.

The clock was ticking and I was searching. Frontier could get us to our destination, but getting back was tricky. Every combination involved an overnight flight. What am I, 20?! No, no, no! None of these would work for me. Our only options was two one-way tickets. Frontier could get us there, and American could get us back on a more civilized flight. Perfect! Or was it?

Our trip was over 4 months away when I received an email from Frontier letting me know they had to made a change to my reservation. They didn’t change it! They cancelled it! What?! They could tell 4 months out that it just wasn’t going to work for them? They said “sorry”. Well, okay then. I took the refund they offered, but now what? I have a return ticket on American, that again isn’t refundable, because somethings you just have to learn over, and over again! United stepped up to the plate, and hit it out of the park. We were good to go!

I bought an upgraded ticket so I could choose my own seat, but was annoyed to find there would be an extra charge depending on just where that seat might be. The seat map looked like anything inside the plane would be extra! Let me explain the only seats you don’t have to pay extra for. The middle seats, and the last row. The middle goes without saying, the last because they don’t recline. The exception being the middle seat in the row that has extra leg room. That’s a preferred seat, and will cost you $18. Let me assure you, the middle seat on any airplane, extra leg room or not, is NOT a preferred seat! I’m not quite 5 feet tall. I don’t need the extra leg room. I want the aisle. And for that privilege I needed to pony up $28. Kim got the middle seat. It was free!

Just what makes a seat “preferred”? Extra leg room? Okay, I get it. Aisle seat anywhere on the plane? A lot of us like that. Makes it easy to get to the lavatory. However, you do have to get up for everyone else in your row who needs to use the facilities, and when someone gets their bag out of the overhead bin, there is a 50/50 chance you’re going to get hit in the head with it. I think that makes it a break even. The window seat might be valid. You can mind your own business, take a nap, or enjoy the scenery, but the exit row? Let’s think about it. If you sit there you are responsible for opening the window exit in the event of an emergency, throwing it out of the way, and hoping that panicked passengers behind don’t stampede you in an effort to get out. It’s a heavy burden. You get little training, except the directions on the emergency card, and suddenly you’re a quasi employee! Shouldn’t they be paying you to sit there? But, here is the real puzzler. The first leg of our trip I had to pay for that “preferred” seat I wanted. On the connecting flight we are seated in the same row, in the same seats, on a different airplane, but the same aircraft type. These seats are now NOT preferred, and free! What? If these are free, why aren’t the others free? I want answers United!

A week later I get an email from American saying that our reservation has changed. What now?! I’m afraid to look! Our once comfortable 1-1/2 hour layover in Charlotte, would now be 4 delightful hours!!! How do they already know they are going to be running late?

I don’t really have a beef with the airline industry. It’s a tough job coordinating flights, scheduling crew members, gate assignments, baggage handling, security, mechanical issues, weather problems, and a dozen other things I have either forgotten or didn’t know. They don’t need the public scrutinizing everything that doesn’t go just right. I don’t complain because of a weather delay. Who wants to be 30,000 feet above the ground in a storm, hoping the dynamics of flight somehow overcomes the laws of gravity? I don’t get upset when there’s a mechanical delay. Think that one through to its logical conclusion. A critical part on your car breaks, and you are suddenly dead in the water. You pull over to the side of the road and call AAA. A critical part breaks on your airplane, and now you’re hoping that guy who paid extra for the exit row, committed those instruction to memory! Four bonus hours in Charlotte? Whatever, we’ll get home eventually.

“There’s a snake in the window!”, she blurted excitedly while pointing. Stunned, three voices responded in unison, “Inside or out?!” Mariah’s mind was processing the question, but it was as if her voice was tangled up, and all she managed to get out was, “In the window!”

That didn’t answer the question, and it was a very important distinction. I had been sitting in a chair next to the window, bouncing my youngest grandson on my lap, when the excitement began. The window my daughter, Mariah, was pointing to was 6 inches off my left shoulder! Okay, maybe 12. Let’s not quibble over the distance. What’s important is that Drayke and I were close! Too close! What followed was a cacophony of voices in my own head, asking pertinent questions and demanding action! My muscles became confused by the mental ruckus, leaving me motionless while waiting for some brainy decision to be made.

The answer I wanted first was the one referring to the precise location of said serpent. Inside or outside?! Which is it?! But Mariah’s tongue couldn’t seem to find those words in the fraction of a second I had to decide what to do! At 64, with a argumentative back, and a toddler on my lap, it didn’t seem prudent to attempt a forward flip from a seated position. A feat that most certainly would be deserving of an Olympic gold medal, and a standing ovation! The standard “tuck and roll” maneuver was conceivably a better option, but the end result would leave Drayke and I, albeit farther from the window, on the floor! Not my first choice. I can get on the floor no problem. Getting off the floor is like solving one of those mind-bending puzzles that requires you to cipher which piece to move first. Though I would have the advantage of adrenalin, it might be wise to take a breath. A voice of reason in my brain shouted to be heard, “Act! Don’t react!”

Swiveling my head to get a bead on this snake, I noticed Mariah hadn’t moved from her position. A good sign. If it had been “in” the house she would have at least been standing on the table, if not in the backyard, abandoning us to fend for ourselves. My eyes searched quickly! Yep, there it was, outside flicking his tongue in and out. He appeared to be looking for a way in! I guess even snakes are searching for some relief from the hot and steamy Florida summer! We attempted to spin what the snake looked to be doing. Drayke may be too young to understand what we were saying, but my granddaughter is not. Nobody wanted her having nightmares about a snake in the house! We did see a small lizard that was observing this snake as intently as we were. I didn’t really want my young grandchildren to learn about survival of the fittest up close, but our slithering friend seemed to be ignoring the lizard, and just poking around the edges of the screen for a weak spot in our fortress. He did not find one, I am relieved to announce.

It was a great opportunity for the kids to observe him. We identified him as a rat snake, or a young black racer, and explained to Aurora that he is a good snake, but not all snakes are, so we never touch a snake. A good motto for staying out of the ER due to an identification error. We watched him for quite a while, moving across the windowsill, and through the bushes until he disappeared. Disappeared?! Where did he go? I don’t know! He was no longer in the bush, or the windowsill. He had to cross the walkway to get to the yard, but I didn’t see him do that!

Left with a mystery, Drayke would return to the window several times throughout the day. He wanted to watch the snake some more, but he was gone. However, I’ve no doubt we haven’t seen the last of him.

Dusty, our son-in-law, had gone to the garage through the kitchen, leaving the door open behind him. He was now backing up, staring in the direction of the common wall between the garage and the house. His eyes were big, searching, and the sounds coming from his throat were not words, yet convincingly expressed anxiety! What now? I’ve never known Dusty to be afraid of any vermin, so what fresh horror could this possibly be that had his rapt attention? Whatever it was, I was sure I wasn’t going to like it. “What is it?!” Mariah shouted. “Is it the snake?!” Dusty couldn’t seem to answer! Who had stolen everyone’s voice this day?!!!! Mariah declared that the best course of action was to just close the door and torch the garage. Dusty gained his voice, lest Mariah should go searching for matches. Pointing he declared, “It is the biggest wolf spider I have ever seen, and it just scampered across my hand”, as he had reached for a box against the wall!

Stepping with trepidation into the garage, together we looked to where he was pointing. I said, “That’s not a wolf spider. I’ve seen one before. That’s a cane spider!” I had encountered my first one when our son lived in Maui. It’s a special breed of BIG! He had to go! The particulars of how he left the vicinity was not my concern…..This was shaping up to be one exciting day!

“Ouch!” Jerking back her hand, dropping the shoe, and swearing not so softly, she did her best not to panic! She entered the house through the garage and walked quickly to the kitchen. She didn’t want to alarm her grandchildren. Swiftly her mind raced with questions about what to do next, but the pain was numbing her brain, making it difficult to think. It was early in Arizona, but it wasn’t in Florida, so she called.

My sister, Susan, had been shaking out her granddaughter’s shoes which had been left in the garage overnight. A smart practice anywhere, but especially in the desert southwest. As she did, an Arizona Bark Scorpion fell out, skittering across her hand, jabbing it’s stinger into her thumb on his way to escape! This species of scorpion is the most venomous in the United States. Unless you’re a young child, or elderly it most likely won’t kill you, but before it’s over, you might think it will.

When I answered the phone I could hear the pain in her voice and knew something was very wrong. I listened carefully as she explained what happened and what she was feeling. In only moments her hand was tingling and turning numb as the fiery pain moved up her arm. Her eye began twitching and she was feeling dizzy. As she spoke I was rapidly Googling Arizona Poison Control. I suggested she put ice on it, which by the way, is not a good idea. It speeds up tissue damage. Instead a cold compress is best. Instead she plunged it in cold water. Not that it really helped anything.

Susan didn’t want to wake her husband up, but I pointed out that very soon, as these symptoms increased, she would not be able to safely get her grandchildren ready for school, let alone drive them there! She made the call. Drilling down I was able to find a phone number that specifically deals with venom. I gave it to her and recommended she call it. I turned to Googling symptoms so we would know what to expect. This was probably going to get worse before it gets better. It did!

Poison Control told her that the venom could move throughout her system, increasing and spreading symptoms one by one for up to six hours. After that time they would gradually decrease. They would call her every hour to check on her, making sure it was just painful and not life threatening.

The venom spread and so did the tingling and numbness in her extremities, all of them! Her heart rate increased, but not alarmingly so. Both eyes were twitching, which gave her a headache. Along with the headache came dizziness, and together they made her nauseous. Through it all the pain never receded. I checked in as often as Poison Control did. I felt really bad for her. I knew it hurt and was scary, but there was nothing I could do. It just had to work its way out. At six hours there was nothing new to endure. Slowly the symptoms began to subside, though it took several days for the pain at the injection sight to go away. It was intense, and it’s not anything she ever cares to go through again. That was her granddaughter’s shoe that was harboring that scorpion. Can you imagine if….? I don’t even want to think it!

I was in Arizona two years ago when my mom died. We were cleaning up her back yard when Susan lifted a piece of wood that a scorpion was napping underneath. She told me to, “Step on it!” I was wearing flip flops! That was not going to happen. I grew up in Arizona too. I know this isn’t how things are done! Then last week she texts me a picture of a scorpion in her washing machine! The “what ifs…” and “how the heck…” comprise a long list of questions and possibilities! They have a problem out there!

I’m telling you this story, because this is the same sister that won’t come see me in Florida. Why? Because we have alligators! Gators are stealthy for how large they are, but I can assure you I will never find one napping in my shoe, or curled up in my washing machine!!!

Shoe shopping can be fun, but not for me. I have to shop online. Try walking into any store looking for a size 5 that doesn’t have a Disney character, or flashing lights….dare you! It can happen, but it’s rare and not worth the hunt. Online it is.

My latest search was for what I call a tennis shoe, but technically probably isn’t. It looks like one, but no laces. It simply slips on and off. I’m not interested in tying and untying laces every time I want to put on, or take off my shoes. You may call it lazy. I call it efficient. I have a high arch, so good arch support is a must, but it’s the soles that get my primary attention. You heard me. I don’t care how cute they are. If the soles look like they might slip on a wet sidewalk, floor, or driveway they are not in the running for my consideration.

Several years ago I slipped on a wet hardwood floor. One foot firmly fixed to the area rug while the other stepped innocently into an invisible puddle of water on the wood. I was going down and there was nothing I could do. The problem was the foot on the rug. It was anchored like an NFL linebacker refusing to give up ground. All the while my left foot was sliding like water over Niagara Falls. There was no stopping it. The result of such a sudden and violent fall was a ruptured hamstring. That rates a 10+ on the 10 pain scale. The longterm effect is a permanent divot in the back of my leg where my hamstring used to be, and an everlasting fear of falling.

I read the reviews, throwing out the high and the low. Someone is always going to find something to complain about. They live for it and I’m not interested. Then there are those that gush about their purchase. Are the shoes really that amazing, or are they just trying to justify spending $70 on a pair of tennis shoes? I know….some of you think that is cheap, but since nobody is paying me to play tennis in them, I think that’s high for a non-professional. I’m looking for key words and I find them.

“Good arch support”. We have a possibility. “Slip when wet”. Nope! Moving on. But my all time favorite is, “They survived Disney!” That’s the gold standard! I can’t tell you how many reviews I’ve read about different shoes that mention how they wore them all day at Disney and their feet didn’t hurt. That’s fantastic, but they are, at the very least, stretching the truth like a rubber band!!! I don’t care what you wear at Disney, by the end of the day your feet hurt! Okay, they don’t just hurt, they are killing you, and you’re pretty sure you’ll never walk again!!! There is no amount of padding, cushion, or arch support that can defeat Disney. I once saw a woman there wearing stilettos! Lord have mercy! What was she thinking?!

Have you watched people at the Disney parks walk? They enter the park all smiles, eager, and bouncing like Tigger. By the end of the day they resemble Eeyore. Their jaunty gait has turned into a shuffle, barely lifting their feet off the ground. They left those happy smiles somewhere on Small World. Their feet feeling like the “world” they just walked wasn’t all that “small”! The only thing they are eagerly looking for is the exit! Show me shoes that can really stand up to Disney and I’ll pay over my $70 threshold for them. They’d be worth every dime. Meanwhile, I’m back to looking at those non-slip soles. My gold standard.

Christmas is only a few days away and for a change I am ready, relaxed, enjoying the music of the season, and everything the Hallmark channel serves up. It was touch and go for a bit, but not for the reasons you might think.

The post office is the dreaded destination of December. Can you get Christmas stamps? How long are the lines? Will my package get to its destination in time? All good questions, but there is a step in there that has to take place before you can venture so far as the post office. That’s right! It’s not the shipping. It’s the wrapping of gifts!

I discovered this December that I am the world’s slowest gift wrapper! What the heck takes me so long? I’ll admit I’m a little methodical. I love those lines on the back of the wrapping paper that guide you so you make a straight cut, and don’t end up with a piece of paper that makes it look like you’ve been drinking since breakfast! I have no idea how we managed to wrap gifts before the turn of the century without such guidance.

I have the tape and the scissors close at hand. The gift tags and marker are within reach. I’ve cleared the table of everything, so that there are no impediments to my progress and yet an hour has passed and I have successfully wrapped three presents. What!? That can’t be! I turn the Christmas music up a bit louder. Maybe that will encourage me to pick up the speed.

It’s not helping that the tape instantly wraps around my fingers like a chimpanzee with a death grip on a banana. What is the deal with that? While I’m wrestling with the tape the clock is ticking, and my painstakingly exact paper creases are wandering from their precise locations, requiring me to get them course corrected before attempting to tear another strip of tape and secure it to the gift before it tapes two of my fingers together. If I were an elf in Santa’s workshop I’d be in serious jeopardy of being fired! He’s on a schedule you know. Well, he’s not the only one!

I have a fair number of gifts to wrap, and though time is of the essence it hasn’t dwindled down to critical….yet! My favorite ones are those that come in a nice square box. They make for easy wrapping. You’ll notice I said “easy”, not “fast”. Somehow fast eludes me, no matter what shape the package is. The dreaded ones are those that are round, or odd shaped that fit in no box you happen to have on hand leaving me to wing it. Winging it usually results in a present that looks slightly south of appealing. To make up for it I add a few bows. Bows make everything more festive, even a package that looks like I wrapped the cat!

Every day for three days I tell my friend Martha, “I’m wrapping presents today.” She can’t believe I am still at it, and thinks my packages must look beautiful. Like something out of Martha Stewart’s Christmas magazine. She’d be wrong, but who am I to say anything different. “Of course they do!”

Whatever the gifts look like under your tree; whether tied in pretty ribbon, or what might be mistaken for the family cat; whether there are many or few, know that the greatest gift of all lies beneath the pretty paper and the bows. It is love. Merry Christmas and God bless you all.

We bought a house back in December, 2020. The interior needed to be painted. There were other priorities, and interruptions, but finally a couple of months ago we were ready to start slinging paint. We had the usual discussion about whether we should do this ourselves, or hire someone. Hire someone? Are you crazy? This is paint, not rocket science. Since when were we “those people” who could afford to hire a painter? We’ve got this! We waffled over color and satin vs semi-gloss, but finally came to an agreement and set out to gather supplies.

What came next was the realization that there is a reason painters get paid so much. Do painters even like to paint? Has painting always been hard, or is it just because we’re older now, and a lot of things are hard? I do know that painting the ceiling is something to be dreaded while being endured. It’s safe to say if you are painting the ceiling you are going to need more than a couple of aspirins. At the very least when buying tarps, paint brushes, rollers, and paint you need to throw in an ice pack or two. Maybe it wouldn’t hurt to find out how much it is to hire someone to just paint the ceiling? After crunching the numbers we concluded, “Not happening. We can do this.”

We’re chunking it down. Not trying to paint the whole house in a weekend. Starting with the master bath, we did not declare it done until all the trim work was complete as well. That took a bit longer than we expected. Okay, a lot longer, but there were learning curves. That’s the very reason I wanted to start in a room that doesn’t get seen by a lot of people. I figured by the time we get to the more common rooms in the house we would be experts at it. I’m hoping we’re a whole lot faster at it too. There is chunking down and then there is painstakingly slow! We need to step it up! After all, this isn’t a government road construction project! 2021 doesn’t need to turn into 2022 before we’re done!

I asked my sister, who paints her house quite often, for advice on brushes, how to get clean edges, stuff like that. She had a lot of advice and even more encouragement, but when I mentioned the doors were six panel she was oddly silent and just said, “Oh”. After painting, and repainting, and trying several different techniques, adding some colorful language to my brush strokes to soak up some frustration I called her back. Confronting her about her silence on the subject she said, “They’re hard. I didn’t want to discourage you.” That was kind of her, but a word of warning might have been good. I thought they were going to be a breeze. I could have painted the bathroom twice in the amount of time it took me to do those doors!

We were proud of how the master bathroom turned out and decided to move on to the hall bathroom. Our thoughts were that we could knock this room out fairly quickly based on size alone. Quick gratification would be a big win for us. Because it’s small we wouldn’t be able to work as a team, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t help. I removed all the wall decor, helped take down all the hardware, and removed the rugs. My husband, Kim, was now free to paint the ceiling. One of the lamp covers broke on the vanity light fixture. Swell! I went to work on the internet to order a replacement. I could find it nowhere! Are you kidding?! It wasn’t unusual, but we had no choice. We’d have to replace the entire fixture. Okay, not the end of the world. I narrowed the search by price. Anything over $110 was deemed extravagant. It’s a bathroom, not the centerpiece of my living room. If you’re in the bathroom long enough to critique the lighting you’ve been in there too long!

It was right about that time that I heard some pretty weighty swearing coming from the bathroom. I knew this was more serious than Kim dropping a gallon of paint on the floor. I could hear it in his voice. Something bad had happened! Really bad! He wasn’t screaming, so I deduced he wasn’t hurt. I considered for a second or two if I really wanted to find out what happened or not. Cautiously I got up. Peering in everything looked fine, but looks can be deceiving. Upon closer inspection I could see that the foot of the ladder had punched a significant hole in the bathtub! Well, at least Kim had finished painting the ceiling.

I did what everyone does when faced with a crisis, I turned to YouTube. “I wonder if we can fix this ourselves?” Turns out “you” can. Turns out “we can’t”! I watched a lengthy video which included a sander, layers of fiberglass, two separate concoctions of stuff I have no idea what it was, buffing, and more goo. I didn’t need to watch the entire thing to know this was way out of our ballpark! What we needed was a plumber and a new bathtub. Our painting job had just become a remodel job!

Replacing a bathtub might not be hard, but plumbers, besides being expensive are busy. What was needed for this job was a boatload of cash and more patience than I have. But when you’re in over your head you have no choice except wait. Since I don’t wait well we’ll shift gears and paint the guest room. What could possibly go wrong in there?

Have you ever wondered how some things have gotten their name and then thought, “How could they have gotten that so wrong?” One of those things is the beach cruiser. Doesn’t that just conjure up an image of riding your fat tire bike along the beach, floating along on the surface of the sand, visually savoring the blue water and salt air breeze? Only in the movies my friends. Only in the movies!

To be fair I may not have a top of the line beach cruiser, but I have a Jamis. A decent bike, beefy, with fat tires, so I was expecting something a little different than what I got. Cruising along on a paved trail near my house I decided to turn around and head back home. I thought, I’ll just turn around here in this wide sandy spot.

Have you ever seen those runaway truck ramps on a mountain pass and wondered if they would really be able to stop an 18 wheeler as it is barreling down a mountain road? Well, the answer is yes! Sand has an amazing power to bring everything that touches it to a grinding impasse! We live near the beach and go there often. I can walk perfectly fine at a decent clip, if necessary, across the parking lot, but hit that deep sand as you step off the boardwalk and it’s all over. I am slogging now! I’ll admit it helps if you have big feet. They work more like snowshoes, but even so, nobody walks gracefully on sand unless, you guessed it, it’s in the movies!

Back to my beach cruiser and my “sandy” spot. I rolled onto that sand and pushed those pedals hard for two full revolutions. I thought I’d make it, and then I stopped! Regardless of how hard I tried to force those pedals around they would not move. Those fat tires were firmly embedded in sand, and I was going nowhere! Crying “Uncle”, I dismounted. A better choice than falling over. Beach cruiser my eye!!

Nice bike. Fun to ride. Makes me feel like a kid again. But, “beach cruiser”? Cute name!

There is a beautiful coconut palm just off the edge of my lanai where I was eating lunch a few weeks ago. The coconuts caught my eye, and I wondered who the first person was to think about cracking that nut to see what is inside? By nut standards it is huge, so I can understand the curiosity, but in application breaking this thing open is not an easy endeavor. Bravo for their persistence.

The coconut from the tree is one step removed from the coconut in your local produce department. That one is perfectly round, fibrously brown, and nearly impossible to break open. The ones on the tree are smooth and green before they are ripe. (Is that the right word?) When fully mature they turn brown and ugly, and look more like a misshapen football. It’s odd looking, and nothing about it suggests it could be food.

Back to our curious guy who thought, “I wonder if you can eat that?” It’s a lot of trouble I can tell you that. I’ve seen this done at a luau in Hawaii. They make it look incredibly simple. You just need a sharpened spike stuck in the ground. You slam the coconut husk onto the spike three or four times, turning it a quarter turn or more with each downward blow until the husk just peels away. Don’t get excited. You’re not done.

Now you’re left with the brown, round, and ever so hard coconut inner shell. This is the one you find in the grocery store. It’s here that they take a machete, while holding the nut in their hand, (sounds wrong already, doesn’t it?), and with the blunt side of the machete take a few whacks at it. Just like that they are miraculously holding a coconut broken perfectly in half, with coconut water running through their fingers. Easy peasy.

It looked simple enough. I even YouTubed it, but I’m missing the requisite tools for the job. I have no sharpened spike stuck in the ground. This is Naples, not Lord of the Flies! I also find myself without a machete. If on the off chance I did have one, taking a whack at a coconut in my hand, even with the back side of the blade, is a surefire recipe for needing to break the land speed record to the nearest emergency room!!! I watched that YouTube demonstration again, pouring over the details. It’s just not in my DNA. I was born in Indiana, not the South Pacific.

My tool of choice is a hammer to crack that nut wide open, preferable on a flat rock outside, and not my kitchen counter. Even so, I have to clobber it several times to shatter it into several not so neat pieces. Then I have to score it with a knife, and use that same sharp knife to pry the coconut meat from the shell. As you can see, the entire process is both time consuming and fraught with danger.

Once upon a time some guy was walking the beach, found a coconut, and with profound tenacity, and quite possibly nothing else to do, worked and worked until he broke into that husk. I can imagine his disappointment upon finding another, even harder shell inside that required more ingenuity, and even more time to breach, not knowing if he would be rewarded with a tasty treat or not should he be successful.

We all know how the story ends. We buy our coconut shredded, sealed in a plastic bag that we can open with scissors. Coconut milk comes in a can with a pull tab to open, and coconut water in a cute little juice box with a cap that unscrews. All because one guy was hugely curious. Thank you, whoever you were. Oh, and you know how I know this was a man and not a woman who made this discovery? Because women are smart enough not to go whacking at things in our hands with a machete.

We moved to a new home over the holidays. Who does that?! Like there isn’t enough going on between Thanksgiving and New Year’s, that we needed to throw in buying a house. A fully furnished house, I might add, that required us to move out the things we didn’t want, before we could move in our stuff. We had downsized twice before buying this house, so you’d think there wouldn’t be a lot to move, but we were surprised by just how much “stuff” you can acquire in a few years. For three years we were living in a pretty tiny space. Where did we put all of this stuff? Did we never get rid of anything!? It’s not like we were raised during the Great Depression you know!

At any rate, here we are, a little over a month after having closed on the first home we have actually owned in 23 years, and we are more, or less settled. There are a few details left to do, like painting, figuring out a place for those few boxes left in storage, replacing the weeds in the front planter with actual plants, and installing new carpet in the bedrooms. But, for now there is time for a glass of wine on the lanai, while watching the birds settle in to roost in the trees for the night, and enjoy the sunset.

It’s not the physical work, or the mental gymnastics of figuring out where to put things that is so hard about moving, though my aching back, and sore elbow may not agree. The real challenge comes when you go to set up the electronics!

When you move electronics you do not just pull plugs and wires willy nilly! No! You color code connections and cables so you can match them up later, or you’ll be asking, “Does this go into the input, or the output connection?” You won’t remember! You’ll be sitting in the living room, surrounded by coaxial cables, and HDMI cables. Multiples of each, because there is the DVD player, the TV, and the Playstation. Not only do you not know what they do, you do not know where they go! When my husband asks me those questions I reply, “I don’t know. I didn’t disconnect it! Didn’t you color code?”

I am not a technological dinosaur. I know how to maneuver my way around the internet on an ipad, a Mac, a PC, and an iPhone. I’ve rebooted, relinked, unlinked, wiped, fixed a catastrophic failure on a printer, and gotten different machines to talk to each other when they were definitely not on speaking terms. I can YouTube a problem with the best of them. But, there is always one that reminds me that we mortals are not in charge! It all started with Hal, in 2001 Space Odyssey, advanced to the “Cylons” in Battlestar Galactica, and now the Terminator is lurking right there in your living room disguised as the TV Remote Control!!!

Our new HD Comcast TV box required a new remote control, which needs to be paired with the TV in order to work. This one receives voice commands. In reality, it doesn’t like commands at all. Not voice, not touch, not nothing! I received a message that said, “Oops. There was a problem. Give us a second and then try again”. Now I know what I mean by “Give me a second”. Obviously not the same thing that they mean, because I waited and waited. I tried to give a voice command. Then I tried to just press the enter key. Both resulted in…oh that’s right…nothing!!! Nothing happened!! I even tried taking the batteries out of the remote and putting them back in, hoping maybe I reset everything. Nope! The same results happened when I turned the TV off, and then back on. I was still on the same screen, with the same directions, waiting for their “…one second” to be up!

So, how did I solve it? I haven’t yet. Don’t judge me! I have thought about throwing the remote across the room, but I doubt that would help, though it would feel rather satisfying. I could call one of my kids, but I would only get the eye roll you can’t see over the phone, but you know is happening. Not worth the judgment. I could call Comcast. That would be a last resort! Anybody ever try calling a cable company? Once you finally get through, you’ll find yourself talking about something you don’t really understand, to somebody in Asia, or India who thinks they are speaking English, but I don’t really think they are. They’re trying, but it’s not helping.

I’ll figure it out eventually, but today may not be the day. For now I’m ignoring it. Perhaps after a little time out, it will decide to play nice. How’s that for a high tech plan?

Fire is a four letter word. Not difficult to say, but in an emergency we can stammer, and sputter while our brain is wrestling with whether we yell, “Fire!”, or “Smoke, or a combination of the two. That can result in a bewildered reaction by those around us, and leave everyone scrambling to react appropriately to the emergency at hand!

It is my pet peeve, and one I lecture on constantly, but my words go unheeded. Written off as if I’m paranoid, or labeled a Nervous Nelly. That is until I have the sweet taste of vindication in my mouth, once I have dealt with the situation, and given the “look”, you know the one, “that look” to the offender that nearly burned down our house! Okay, that last part might be a slight exaggeration, but my point was made.

How many times have I told my husband, Kim, and two other people in my family, who shall remain nameless, but you know who you are Dusty and Rebecca, not to put anything flammable on the stove! It could catch fire! Hence the word “flammable”! Look it up! Their unanimous response is, “The stove isn’t on. How is it supposed to catch fire?” Well, let me tell you how.

Sunday evening Kim was helping me cook supper for our daughter and granddaughter. He had taken the shrimp out of the oven, and laid the potholders on the stove. I was busy gathering utensils, and condiments for the table, when Mariah’s eyes grew large! She stammered, caught between shouting “Smoke”, and “Fire”! I wasn’t exactly sure what she was saying, but I saw the look on her face, and where she was looking. She pointed and began to rise to her feet. My back was to the stove when my brain finally untwisted her words. “Fire!” I spun around, and in a swift response to smoke rising before me, I grabbed the potholders! In one nimble move I dropped them in the sink, and turned the water on. Though there were wisps of smoke still rising from the stovetop, and the foul smell of smoke hung in the air, a crisis was averted, but it wasn’t over. Oh no, no!

With the soggy potholders in hand, I turned to Kim, “This is why I tell you never to put anything flammable on the stove!” His feeble response, “I didn’t know it was on.” It wasn’t on, but it was still hot from where I had just finished cooking peas. The red light on the stove indicated as much. A nice safety feature that apparently was ignored, just like my words.

No one was cooking at the moment, therefore it never crossed Kim’s mind that the stove was still hot. Sometimes, assuming the worst of what could happen, taking the proper precautions to prevent a, “what if” is better than dealing with the, “Oh s**t” when it does happen, because we weren’t careful. Vigilance in all things help to keep us safe. That and listening to me when I tell you, “Don’t put flammable things on the stove”. Told you so!